Desktop context menus and icons should be Gnome intrinsic, not tied to gmc.

[James Green <gnome cyberstorm demon co uk>]

Just to add my 2p.

In message <3702E86E.EDA5EBE4@pair.com>, Jesse D. Sightler
<jsight@pair.com> writes
>Miles Lane wrote:
> 
>> A concern I have is that in order to have desktop shortcuts, I have to be
>> running gmc (not that running gmc is bad).  I think this association is
>> unnecessary and, in fact, just bad UI.  

Agreed. When I started gnome the first time, I couldn't work out where
the desktop icons were that are present in many lovely screenshots; I
opened gmc and they all appeared which I took to mean a bug somewhere. I
exited gmc using the close window icon and the desktop icons disappeared
at which point I became thoroughly confused. The whole point of a
desktop GUI is IMO to have features of the desktop permanently
available. Right now I have to click File then close to keep my icons.

>I tend to agree.  I think that this discussion was held before and it
>was decided that desktop icons would be handled by a different
>executable.
>This may have changed by now, though.
>
>> All base UI functionality should be
>> independant of any application or applet. 
>
>Well, it obviously has to be somewhere.  :-)  No matter what you do, the 
>functionality is going to be in some application, it's just a matter of
>whether or not it should be compiled into the same binary with the file
>manager.

The average end user isn't going to care; I just don't want to have to
run additional apps on top of gnome to get the desktop icons, something
I consider paramount to getting Windows users over to Linux desktops.
It's a bit like sitting down at your office desk and discovering someone
had forgotten to build in drawers.

>> I consider desktop UI to be base
>> functionality.  Desktop UI should include of the ability to access desktop
>> settings via context sensitive menus using clicks on the desktop (like M$
>> Windoze), drag and drop support and the ability to create and manipulate
>> desktop shortcuts.  It makes more sense for gmc to be strictly an application
>> that enables file manipulation.
>
>The Windows comparison blows this argument to pieces.  :-)  In windows
>all of those
>actions are handled by a program, "explorer.exe".  In Windows "explorer"
>is the one,
>true program which serves as a (limited) version of a panel, a file
>manager, a desktop
>manager, a taskbar, a clock, a recent documents system, and a web
>browser.  Admittedly,
>some of this is done by calling ActiveX controls, but it is basically
>one large, monolithic
>executable.

True, but the point is that it is transparent to the user.

>I really don't think that anyone wants that.  The biggest problem is
>that this "base UI" MUST
>be completely stable.  Right now GMC is not stable at all, and certainly
>not as stable
>as Win95.

So I have noticed. I keep wondering if maybe one day someoe will call
for an entire week when no new features are added to (L)GPL code,
instead all warnings in compilation are got rid of - would prolly make
the world that little bit better.

>> Implementing the functionality in this way would lower the barrier to entry 
>for
>> Gnome newbies who are migrating from Windoze.
>
>I think that Gnome should have a rock solid file-manager that is easy to
>use.  Unfortunately
>this is not currently the case.  Maybe it will get better.

Indeed. I personally very much like the functionality of Windows
Explorer and the desktop in general. No I mean it, the Linux community
and developers have produced an OS which blows windows out of the water,
but it still needs to catch up on the GUI. KDE is damn fine, but also
damn slow (64Mb K62-300 FWIW), and I hope the flexibility and eventual
stability of Gnome plus [insert wm] will win in the long run.

One must remember that Linux has been aimed squarely at people who know
what they are doing up until now. Indeed it still is, but Microsoft have
spent a lot of money researching exactly what the average desktop user
wants and the results, in the form of Win95, should be learned from.
Icons on the desktop, a Start button (or Gnome-foot :-), file manager
and system control panel are IMO essential. Whenever my parents and
sister go on my 'puter I also try and look at what they are doing - my
mother has only recently realised that the vertical bar in a window can
be used to move the screen up and down rather than just clicking the up
and down arrows. Simple things.

Right now, gmc is quite nice. I like the look; more functionality
options could be present, but it's similarities to Windows Explorer are
helpful. I would like to be given the new directory contents though when
I click on a plus arrow...

I've been in RH5.2 the past three days setting it up more properly, and
am about to begin Gnome installation; I just gotta figure out how to
upgrade egcs without breaking everything. I'm d/ling news right now, but
hope to be back in Linux in the next couple of hours and getting to
grips with the latest gnome components more fully. I'll no doubt
contribute more suggestions as I come across them.


P.S. I agree to the functionality suggested in the subject header, and
IMO it should be in Gnome.

-- 
James Green